Another View: Working toward a tobacco-free generation

ANOTHER VIEW

11:47 AM,
Feb. 22, 2014

chan lowe/south florida sun sentineL

Written by

Kathleen Sebelius

Here's a sobering statistic about the tobacco epidemic - a battle many Americans think is already won: If we continue at current smoking rates, 5.6 million children alive today will ultimately die prematurely from smoking. That's one in 13 kids gone too early due to an entirely preventable cause. That is unacceptable.

That's why we are asking every American to join our efforts to make the next generation tobacco-free.

Today, we are at a crossroads. In the past 50 years, we've more than cut the adult smoking rate in half from nearly 43 percent down to 18 percent, and we've reduced 12th grade ...